The History of the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House

Robert & Alberta McMurphey and their children

The history of the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, or the “Castle on the Hill,” begins with Thomas Winthrop Shelton and his wife, Adah. The Sheltons made the move from Salem to Eugene with their daughter, Alberta, in 1873. After buying 320 acres in downtown Eugene, including Skinner’s Butte, from pioneer Mary Skinner Cook, Dr. Shelton hired architect Walter Pugh to design a home to sit on the slope of the butte overlooking downtown and the train station. Nels Roney served as the builder. The home was completed in 1887; however, an aggrieved workman set fire to the house (only admitting to the crime once on his deathbed decades later) and the home had to be rebuilt. The building was completed in 1888, for a total cost of $8,000. 1888 is marked on the western elevation of the house.

Dr. Shelton, Adah, and Alberta lived in their Victorian castle until Dr. Shelton died of leukemia in 1893, at the age of 49. After her husband’s death, Adah moved to Portland and gave the house to her daughter. Alberta lived there with her husband, Robert McMurphey, whom she had met at a Christian Endeavor Conference in Minnesota. The couple had four daughters and two sons. Alberta and Robert were married in the parlor of the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, and three of their four daughters went on to be married in the same place (in the alcove created by the cornering of the bay windows in the parlor).

The McMurphey children spent their days in the house practicing music, sewing their own clothes, and helping out around the home with chores, such as dusting and bringing wood up from downstairs via the dumbwaiter in the kitchen. Music was an important pastime in the household, as Alberta had graduated from a piano conservatory at the University of Oregon and taught piano lessons for some time. This Queen Anne Revival style, Victorian house was not just a home for a privileged family in Eugene, it also served as a farmstead of sorts. The McMurpheys kept horses, cows, and chickens, and the children helped tend to them.

Robert McMurphey died in 1921 in Roseburg, Oregon. Alberta spent the majority of her years living in the house atop the hill, and remained an active member of the community in Eugene for 28 years following her husband’s death. She died in a nursing home in Portland in 1949, and the house was sold to Eva Johnson and Eva’s husband, Curtis Johnson.

Dr. Eva Johnson was born in Pendleton, Oregon, but moved with her mother to Eugene following her father’s tragic death in the Blue Mountains. They lived with Eva’s grandmother in the Campbell House, just around the corner from the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House. Growing up, Eva was close to the McMurphey children, and spent much of her time at their home. She grew up loving the house and hoped to someday own it. When Alberta died, none of the six McMurphey children decided to take on the responsibility to keep the house, so it went on the market and Eva purchased it for $30,000.

Eva and her husband Curtis had met at Rush Medical School in Chicago. They had three daughters and one son, and spent 25 years practicing medicine in Madison, Wisconsin. Eva studied psychology and Curtis served in the U.S. Army, including a stint as the pediatrician for General Douglas MacArthur’s son. Once Curtis was honorably discharged in 1950, the Johnsons moved to Eugene and opened up offices within their new house on the hill. Eva specialized in personal and divorce counseling.

Curtis spent much of his time in Eugene unhappy, and would lock himself away in the turret within the attic. He once actually locked himself in the turret (the door locked from the outside) and had to cut a hole in the wall so that he could reach out and open the door. In 1966 Eva sold 3.25 acres of land to a group planning to build retirement homes, which became the Ya-Po-Ah Terrace high-rise apartment tower. Curtis died the following year, in 1967, and Eva continued to live in the house, renting rooms out to university students.

In 1975, Eva offered the house to her children; however, none of them were able to take it, so she made a deal with the Lane County Historical Society: they could have the house, but she would be able to live there until she died. She died in 1986 at age 97, and the house was subsequently transferred from Lane County to the City of Eugene. The house is now kept open to the public by the nonprofit Shelton McMurphey Johnson Associates.

Read the National Register Listing for the house at the National Park Service web site.

Architectural Landmark

The Shelton McMurphey Johnson House has been a landmark in Eugene for more than a century. Although many changes have been made over the years, the house – with its carved and turned exterior woodwork, polygonal tower, ornate open porches, and large bay windows – remains Eugene’s most elaborate example of late-Victorian Queen Anne Revival style architecture.

Floor Plans, Furnishings, and Changes

The full basement originally included a laundry room with a wood stove for boiling the laundry, a fruit and vegetable storage room, and a wood-burning furnace. During the summer the basement was filled with wood for the coming winter. In 1988 the basement was remodeled to create an apartment for the groundskeeper and caretaker.

The first floor, which is open to the public, currently consists of a pantry, kitchen, back porch, a bathroom, dining room, parlor, hall, sitting room, bedroom and conservatory, as well as two rear porches and a veranda at the front entry.

In 1919, the conservatory or sun room was enlarged to create an office for Mr. McMurphey. Around 1930, a large, built-in cabinet was constructed in the first-floor hallway to house Native American artifacts and early colonial antiques.

The second floor contains three bedrooms, the “hired girl’s room”, a sleeping porch and a bathroom. The roof of the veranda and the conservatory on the first floor is roofed in copper and is accessible through the windows on the second floor.

The central staircase connects the attic story to the second floor. The attic area includes a small room in the turret, a south-facing room and a large open area. A stationary ladder through a roof scuttle provided access to the roof and a widow’s walk on top of the roof.

Over the years a number of changes have been made in the original floor plan. An upstairs bathroom was added, replacing the need for a washstand waste jar and under-the-bed chamber pot. An upstairs sleeping porch was constructed around 1912. The entire McMurphey family slept on the porch, using heated bricks wrapped in towels to keep their feet warm in winter.

The history of the house includes two major fires. The first one was set in 1887 by a disgruntled construction worker. In 1950, a fire destroyed parts of the house, which was being remodeled by the Johnsons.

In 1951, the Johnsons replaced the turret, which had been removed in 1915. They also restored the exterior of the house, and repainted it in the original green. Later, the upstairs sleeping porch was converted to a kitchenette, which included a stairway for direct access, and the bedrooms were rented to University students.

Today, the City of Eugene owns and maintains the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House with the help of local volunteers.

Castle on the Hill: Gardens and Landscape at the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House

The single most remarkable feature of the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House landscaping is its setting on the south slope of Skinner Butte. In fact, when the house was built in 1888, it was often referred to as the “Castle on the Hill” because of the panoramic views of Eugene and the surrounding hills.

The original owners, Dr. T.W. Shelton and his wife, Adah, at one time owned all of Skinner Butte. The original estate has been greatly reduced in area during the latter half of the 20th century. Today the property is little over an acre in size.

The location of the house on a terrace with a commanding view is in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance villa or the English manor house. The main terrace afforded level ground for formal gardens to the east and west of the house, while to the south a series of hillside terraces offered the potential for additional gardens.

Landscaping the Urban Farmstead

The house originally was the centerpiece of an urban gentleman’s farmstead. Until the early 1900s, Skinner Butte was a treeless, grassy knob. Early photos show sheep grazing on the butte. The Sheltons set out on an ambitious tree planting program, mostly consisting of incense cedar. Some of the trees were aligned with the turrets and pediments of the house, or marked the corners of the main terrace. Many of the plantings made in later years were informal and included such native species as big leaf maple, Oregon ash, Pacific madrone, Douglas fir, and Ponderosa pine.

According to a historic photo taken around 1895, the Sheltons began foundation plantings around the house which were added to by the second owners, the McMurpheys. The two families also were responsible for informal ornamental plantings scattered about the main terrace. These plantings included evergreen and deciduous magnolias, rhododendrons, lilacs, roses, hollies, mock orange, snowberry, honeysuckle, Oregon grape, boxwood. Firethorn, and viburnums. Based on their apparent age, plum and apple fruit trees were planted on the lower terrace by the McMurpheys.

Driveways and Walkways

In its early days, the estate featured a carriage drive from the railway depot on Willamette Street easterly through a gate on the property and then to the barn, which was sited approximately 200 feet east of the house. Both sides of the drive were flanked by incense cedars. The main pedestrian access to the house from the city was parallel to the carriage drive through a separate gate onto the grounds. A monumental set of wooden stairs was constructed up the terrace escarpments, and incense cedars were planted along the stairway. In later years, the cedars were cut down, probably because they blocked the view from the house, and a more utilitarian concrete path and steps were built to traverse the terrace escarpments.

The coming of the automobile rendered the carriage drive obsolete. Around 1912-1915, Third Street was extended west of Pearl to provide a service drive to the house. The service drive ran along the north edge of the main terrace behind the house and included a turnaround on the west side of the house.

Today, the grounds are maintained with the help of local volunteers. Parking and visitor access to the house and grounds are off Third & Pearl Streets.